So an interesting addendum to my previous post about the Siren in Borderlands.

Now that the game is out in the wild, I've been tripping across gameplay accounts and impressions from friends-- same as any big new game. Most of what I heard was totally expected, except for one thing: the Siren class is hopelessly busted.

By "busted," I mean busted in the strategy guide sense of the term. A busted item is so optimal that you have no logical reason to use anything else, a busted character makes all alternative choices sub-par by comparison. Well, the Siren is better at DPS than all other classes in a genre where combat is largely a DPS race. She can debuff and stun enemies, she can self-heal and self-buff. Even without a completely optimal build, she can go solo and (reportedly) outperform an entire team of the other characters at equivalent levels.

The Siren's achievements don't suggest that she is by far the best class in the game. They suggest quite the opposite, that she's a stealthy class that will be useful in groups but not getting a ton of solo kills. So either whoever came up with the Siren achievement list either played the game poorly or just didn't write them based on how the game actually played.

It is also possible that the current Siren simply does not work as intended, since I've read speculation that her ludicrous DPS is purely the result of Elemental damage being superior to all other damage types due to a quirk of calculation. The Borderlands developers I believe said they were disinterested in making the game balanced, which is typical for loot fiend games (but not really desirable). It will be very interesting to see if Elemental damage or other elements of the Siren are patched in the PC version.